Nobody thinks hard about their domain until it is a problem: too long for a truck door, spelled three ways on the phone, or held hostage by a registrar account nobody remembers. Ten minutes of care up front prevents years of low-grade friction.
Choosing the name
Short, spellable, and sayable over a noisy phone line wins. Your business name if available; a tight variant if not. Dot-com remains the trust default in the US, though regional endings work where they match reality. Skip hyphens and cute misspellings, which are verbal landmines ("that is kleen with a K, no E at the end..."). If the perfect name is taken, a clean modifier (get-, hq, your state) beats a mangled spelling.
you@yourbusiness.com is not optional
A business emailing from a free Gmail address whispers side-project. Professional email on your own domain costs a few dollars a month, and it compounds: every message sent is a tiny brand impression, and email marketing deliverability depends on a properly authenticated domain. It is a standard $55 setup in our add-on list, done in an afternoon.
Own your own keys
The horror stories share one root: the domain registered under a departed employee's account, a defunct agency, or a forgotten email. Register the domain in an account you control, with your billing card and a recovery email you will still have in five years. Auto-renew on, always; expired domains are bought by squatters within hours. Whoever builds your site, including us, should be a delegate on your account, never the owner.
Boring decisions, cheap to make correctly, expensive to unwind. Get them right once and never think about them again.
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